BBC iPlayer 4k support in time for the World cup?

[ajwool]

So, will we finally get Bbc iPlayer support in time for the World Cup? Announcement coming imminently:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/bbc-4k-hdr-world-cup-confirmation-week-away

[Prior20]

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@paulpdw8 wrote:

Here to hoping some clever person can come up with a fix for the iplayer next.

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sony will fix it after the final, announce how it has worked night and day to get this working, unfortunetly there will be no way to test until the next BBC 4k content, then the whole vicious circle will start again....

[stevenhenry]

Got the same email as everybody else that 4k live streaming is a new technology that doesnt work on my XD93 so I asked if it will ever be available and they said we can confirm that our engineers are currently working on making more 4k devices compatible with Live Ultra HD BBC IPlayer events. At least they're working on it i guess.

[BigUglyGac]

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@rgledhill wrote:

"Really sony, you knew nothing about HLG until this year i guess. inept is all i can think of. "

And, yet again, this wouldn't have been using the latest encoding system that didn't exist in those days, and I bet that the demo was at 25fps and maybe not 4k.

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the issue is they are lying again that hlg is super new and they didnt know about it when they where bloody demoing it years ago. and as iv said no amount of tweaking is liable to "fix" the problem if the set isnt physically capable of processing a 4kk 60fps stream. 

just wish they would stop contradicting themselves or at least stop telling bare faced lies like that have done a couple of times now. maybe then we would have a bit more faiting in their engineer line being accurate. 

[terryos16]

Hi,

i do understand that, but I hadn’t seen anyone mention that only a few weeks ago the trial clip worked fine, and wondered if anyone knew the exact reason why the BBC has made such a fundamental change to its encoding between its trials and first major test of its technology.

thanks 

[BigUglyGac]

not sure on this but was the previous trial 50fps like the current one ? this could be the reason some sets now arnt able to run it. 

[speedyrite]

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@Fontmeister wrote:

<snip>

I've given up on my TV with iPlayer and 4K HDR even though it's updated with the latest firmware.

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Ditto. XE90 has a beautiful picture quality, but 4K HDR source from external device(s) is the way to go now for me.

[rgledhill]

And, yet again, it's not HLG that's new, it's the compression system used to turn the vast amounts of picture data into a stream which is manageable.  HDR, HLG, 4k have all been around a while, it's the compression algorithms that are new.

Yes, it's the 50fps that killed it for us unfortunately; previous demos were at 25fps.  Football however looks particularly bad in 25fps without good picture processing as the ball stutters across the screen.  Ironic then that our sets have particularly good motion processing that partially solves this problem with 25fps anyway!

Yes, I think an external dedicated 4k 50/60fps stick is the way to go.  Pity we have to, but there we go.

[BigUglyGac]

id be happy if the bbc would set iplayer to 1080p60 but seems they cant do that and still flog 720p as a hd picture. true its not hdr and 4k but hell at least sports wouldnt look a mess anymore. 

[stormyuk]

I missed this last night but apparently the PS4 Pro now has 4K iPlayer support (no HDR though) and not on the list but was widely reported yesterday, I missed the news so watched the England game in HD (in photo mode, to avoid frame repeats) but will check out the PS4 Pro for the next BBC game. I wonder why the TVs could not be given a non-HDR player if the console could. Hmmm.

@Prior20 You are totally right with your quote!

@Prior20 wrote:

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sony will fix it after the final, announce how it has worked night and day to get this working, unfortunetly there will be no way to test until the next BBC 4k content, then the whole vicious circle will start again....

[StoufferTheCat]

When I first read this thread I assumed people had been mistaken - surely Sony wouldn't have "top of the range" TVs from last year, that can actually still be bought, that wouldn't support this 4k trial from the BBC.

I then assumed it might just be the XE90 - I truly couldn't believe that a TV I'd spent over £1200 on wouldn't work.

Anyway, I can confirm that yesterday the iPplayer app on the PS4 Pro was updated to Version 2 and that indeed supports the World Cup in UHD. As mentioned above, there is no HDR, which is a shame - and I can only hope something that is being worked on as the PS4 Pro is more than capable of HDR (Both Netflix & Amazon Prime apps support it).